


chiromancy

by en passant (corinthian)



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's
Genre: Gen, but instead it's not, it was going to be toolshipping, who has the right to change the past?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-10
Updated: 2015-05-10
Packaged: 2018-03-29 22:00:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3912169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corinthian/pseuds/en%20passant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moving on also means leaving the past behind, you can't carry it with you forever.</p><p>--</p><p>Post-canon, this time it really was his fault. Yuusei, Bruno, empty houses and trying to keep going forward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	chiromancy

Bruno’s hands hadn’t had any callouses. The first night they had stayed up late and the humid summer air had forced Yuusei to abandon his jacket and gloves — he had noticed it then. Under the thick motor grease, when they passed the tools to and fro, Bruno’s hands were entirely different from everyone else’s. There weren’t even the kind of work callouses that Ushio had; Bruno’s skin was devoid of any of those rough spots made from repeated motions like grabbing a D-Wheel’s grip, holding wrenches, even the dimples from clutching pencils too tightly. They weren’t like Jack’s hands, that had been worn from Satellite, softened by Neo Domino, but always remained battle ready, calloused from Riding Duels and, still, fist fights. Crow’s left hand had three scars from grabbing barbed wire a few years back and his right had a mysterious rounded smooth scar that must have happened after they parted ways, but before they reunited. Yuusei had never asked. Bruno’s hands were unusual, even compared to the twins and Aki’s hands — the tips of Luka’s and Aki’s fingers hand card callouses, Lua was always skidding on his palms when he fell (and he cried).

But everything about Bruno had been new and unusual, then.

Yuusei hadn’t said anything, then. He had thought that they might have time, later, when it was all over, to understand each other better. (The inside of Yuusei’s right thumb had a jagged scar from when he stuck his hand inside a moving engine and bits of his skin got caught on the hinge of a piston, there was a rough spot on the outside of his right wrist from when he almost died on that building years ago, callouses from riding, from hauling scrap and ones that plainly said where he’d grown up.) There had been so much to know.

—

Zora offers to keep the space open for them, her son has moved on again — but amicably, on to bigger and better things — and she owns the building and she has a soft spot for Yuusei. He doesn’t want to accept, because it’s her charity yet again and it’s Martha’s good name and reputation that he’s using, again.

But when he thinks about packing up and moving on he doesn’t know where to start. Even with Jack and Crow’s D-Wheel’s gone the tools are still there, the lifts and resting blocks, the air compressor and wheeled shelf with all the odds and ends they might need. Yuusei thinks about how it only took Bruno a few minutes to understand Yuusei’s filing system for everything — tools and parts were organized from what would be needed for the inside of the D-Wheel out. Unusual parts were placeholders or tricks that Yuusei couldn’t quite let go of, even if he had the money for proper parts, now. Working together had been too easy.

So instead, he thanks Zora and somehow she _knows_. (It’s probably because of how the shop is littered with remains of her husband and how she still keeps his bedroom pristine). You can leave everything as it is, she offers.

Yuusei just nods, because gratitude can’t make its way out. It solves the problem, neatly, of how he couldn’t even touch the couch Bruno had slept on, much less move it.

—

_Starting over, that’s what I’m doing isn’t it? It’s not so bad._

Bruno had said that, dropped it between them in the early hours of the morning when they were both too tired to keep working but too wired to go to sleep. The morning air carried dew and the artificial smell of the city and they sat outside the garage back to back.

“You’re not starting over, the present doesn’t exist without the past.” Yuusei had said in response.

Bruno had probably started laughing then — Yuusei felt his shoulders shake, even if he didn’t hear the laughter. It took a few minutes and then the joyous sound erupted from Bruno and he waved his hands, even though Yuusei couldn’t see them. His back muscles rolled with the movement, tilted them both to the side.

“I didn’t mean — I’m not laughing at you! It’s not funny — it’s just — “ his laughter swallowed his words again and then he went silent. “Something about that, what you said, it feels familiar. This must be what it’s like to have a home.”

Yuusei should have taken his hand, then, probably. Instead he looked up at the sky — the stars were different, more hidden, because the city lights were brighter. 

“There’s always a place for you here.”

—

Choices became difficult. Everything from groceries to clothes to what to work on. Yuusei spends hours shuttling from project to project, he wears the same clothes every day, he changes nothing about the apartment he’s renting — doesn’t unpack, doesn’t buy any furniture, leaves the walls barren.

It’s Jack who notices first — of course it is — who puts his fist through the wall and then they have to apologize to the landlord and pay for it. And it’s Jack who yells but also Jack who doesn’t have an answer when Yuusei plainly says he’s working on fixing Momentum and that’s all there is to it. Neither of them have ever been particularly good with words but Jack can tell something has gone sour and he doesn’t have the power to change it and it frustrates him. (It’s Carly who comes by later, to pick up Jack, who brings a potted plant and in that bossy-endearing way of hers tells Yuusei he has to take care if it — who understands and reads Jack better than anyone else in the world).

Or maybe Crow notices first, but isn’t as hotheaded as Jack. He comes by every Thursday, for a while. He brings the kids and they tear through Yuusei’s apartment and play hide and seek among the boxes — most of which just have spare parts, nothing that Yuusei actually _owns_ in them — demand sweets and make Yuusei feel like he has to move forward, somehow, because it’s their future he’s trying to fix. 

It’s Aki who understands the best, though. They only meet on weekends, between her classes and she doesn’t ask him to make a choice — she gives him a time and they meet. It’s nice, with Aki, but he can’t help but to feel guilty.

“Yuusei.” She says, their fingers brushing against each other but not quite twining together. “It wasn’t your fault.”

She’s not the one he wants to forgive him, though.

—

Was it any different than with Z-One? Hadn’t Yuusei decided, all on his own, that _his_ present was more valuable than someone else’s future? Hadn’t Yuusei decided that he had the _right_ to change history?

Hadn’t Yuusei decided to keep going forward, despite it all?

—

Martha always said that moving your body helped chase sadness away. So when Bruno stood up, abruptly, and Yuusei could easily read the doubt on his face there was only one thing to do. It was hard work to clean the garage, to clean the bedrooms and the kitchen. They scrubbed the floors and windows, under the stove and even behind the tub and toilet.

“I’m exhausted.” Bruno said, even though he hadn’t broken a sweat at all, and collapsed on the couch he used as a bed. Yuusei moved to sit on the floor, nearby, when Bruno’s arm looped around his waist and tugged him down on the couch as well. “You must be tired too, Yuusei.”

They didn’t both really _fit_ on the couch but if Yuusei rolled towards the wall and Bruno didn’t mind being used as a cushion, it worked.

Even though it was summer and they had been working hard, Bruno wasn’t too warm at all. There was a pleasant coolness to his skin and even with the afternoon sun streaming in through the window they fell asleep together like that.

—

Yuusei still has the same scars on his hands. Even labwork doesn’t softened the pads of his fingers or taken away the callouses. But when he duels Jack, before he leaves, the vibrations of the road make his skin tingle and later his hands will ache. Things change.

He decides, then, what he’ll do next.


End file.
